Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Catch-22 of Forgiveness

For if you
forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

~Matthew 6:12, 14-15 (NRSV).

We can be forgiven—pardon the
pun—in struggling to forgive, not understanding the nature of grace is to
consider others the same as ourselves. Jesus, of course, propounds the fact in
the next chapter of Matthew; verse 12. The golden rule is, do to others as we
would have them do to us—this sums up the spirituality of relationships.

One-Way Forgiveness

There is an important
clarification so far as forgiveness is concerned.

Forgiveness is normally offered
and accepted—the two-way street. Many people falsely see no attribution of forgiveness
other than via the two-way street; they think forgiveness offered that’s not
accepted is not full forgiveness. This two-way street is not the type of
forgiveness, I think, that Jesus has in mind here, above.

When we think about it, in most
cases, forgiveness does not involve two parties equally, as there is usually
one party more aggrieved than the other is. In many cases, only one party is
aggrieved; they are the ones that struggle to forgive.

If we can accept that forgiveness
can also be a one-way street—the process offering grace, without necessarily
being accepted—then we can progress. After all, if forgiveness is not
forgiveness because of some part another person plays or doesn’t play, how on
earth do we achieve it?

The Plain Truth on How Forgiveness Works

As suggested above, the key to
forgiveness is humility.

Rather than pray for humility,
however, God makes us able to be more humble at the pure consideration of our
many imperfections—not to be put down by them but to see them in their true
light.

Strangely, focusing on our own
sinfulness, and God’s commensurate grace, is the secret to humility, which is
also the foundation of a forgiving manner.

The truth of our sinfulness—seeing
it raw and true—is a blessing because a miraculous thing happens when such
humility becomes us; suddenly we see the moment and our world as they truly
are. God, that moment, has blessed us with his vision. There are a plethora of
spin-offs. Unabashed joy coats our demeanour and others are blessed by us
without the waft of an effort.

When we see ourselves aright—struggling
in our sinfulness, but not giving up—we see God’s grace all the more, and we
see others in a much better light, naturally. We have adopted fairness and
justice.

Forgiveness works as a miracle,
but one engendered by our investment in humility.

God blesses such an investment—the
commitment to true sight—with provision of feelings of forgiveness that we
cannot explain; hence the miracle. We cannot claim this as a work of our own.
It is too marvellous for us.

The Reversal in Forgiveness

Forgiveness can only occur,
genuinely, when—in the initial state—we comprehend our own sinfulness and need
of God’s unrelenting forgiveness. Understanding that the compassion of the Lord
to forgive us, once and for all, is incomprehensible can’t be understated.

It helps us understand how
comparatively small our forgiveness of someone’s indiscretion against us is.
This is not to downplay the hurt we feel, but it puts it into perspective. Just
how much has the Lord forgiveness us, personally?

When we put the acid of
condemnation on ourselves, and then find afresh that God has instead replaced
that acid with the cream of forgiveness, we are so much more able to see that
favour we ought to extend to others.

Forgiveness is a reversal. It has
nothing to do with the other person. Forgiveness is about us and God. If we
struggle with this let’s rethink grace. That’s the Catch-22 of forgiveness—it
begins and ends with us and our processes with God.